Imprint Looks Beyond Credit Following $1 Billion Valuation

Co-branded credit card startup Imprint is now a billion-dollar company.

The new valuation — at $1.2 billion, to be precise — came as the company raised $150 million in a Series D round announced Wednesday (Dec. 17).

Imprint says it will use the funding to expand beyond credit into debit, secured cards and flexible financing, and to power its loyalty programs and connecting brands to reward-loving users via the Imprint Rewards Network.

“Brands today face pressure to earn customer loyalty through authentic and genuinely rewarding experiences,” Daragh Murphy, Imprint’s co-founder and CEO, said in a news release. “This milestone underscores how our team is delivering on our mission to build the best way to pay at the brands customers love. With this new capital, we are accelerating the evolution of co-brand from a bank product into a complete brand loyalty platform.”

The release cites some other recent milestones for the company this year, such as achieving 200% cardholder base growth year-over-year. Imprint has also undertaken partnerships with Rakuten, Booking.com, Crate & Barrel and Fetch, and been given a AAA investment rating from Fitch Ratings for its inaugural $300 million securitization.

In related news from the rewards space, recent research from PYMNTS Intelligence showed that on Black Friday this year, financially stressed households, young shoppers and high-income earners depended on rewards to pay for seasonal spending.

The research found that consumers moved from simply using credit to “actively optimizing it as a reimbursement mechanism, and indeed as a form of income, for holiday budgets rather than as pure purchasing power,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.

Traditional credit card use remained stable year over year, the research found. Other types of credit, including buy now, pay later (BNPL), showed some upward momentum, but installment features on credit cards became a go-to liquidity tool for financially stressed shoppers.

Among consumers living paycheck to paycheck with trouble paying monthly bills, 58% used credit card installment features for their Black Friday purchases, compared to 49% last year.

“Rewards proved attractive across income segments,” the report added. “More than one-third of struggling consumers used credit card rewards or loyalty points to cover holiday spending, while 52% of Generation Z did the same.”

In addition, 49% of Gen Z chose merchants based on reward value. High-income households leaned particularly heavily into rewards, with 40% of consumers making more than $150,000 using rewards to fund purchases, the highest usage rate across income groups.